Taking aim: C-M has sights set on another successful season
Rick Bell should not have even walked into the WPIAL playoff pairings meeting last year at the DoubleTree hotel in Green Tree.
No matter what, the Canon-McMillan High School boys basketball coach was getting left out in the cold.
Despite having the most wins in Class 6A, surrendering the fewest points in the classification (47.3), non-section victories over Latrobe, Trinity, North Catholic and Washington – all playoff teams – and splitting regular-season games with section champion Mt. Lebanon, the Big Macs were the seventh seed.
The message Bell is preaching to his team, which returns three starters from last year’s group that went 21-3, is that slip-ups similar to its penultimate section game to Baldwin cannot happen. It could be the difference between winning a section title and, apparently, dropping six spots in the unpredictable seeding procedure.
“We don’t have a chip on our shoulder. It’s just a let’s take care of business (attitude),” Bell said.
Canon-McMillan might have the roster to take care of that business and possibly win its first section title since 1973. The Big Macs have four players, Drew Engel, Elliot Waller, Ethan Beachy and Tommy Samosky, returning in prominent roles. Engel, Waller and Beachy were starters last season and averaged around 10 points per game.
“We have four kids back from a team that won 21 games,” Bell said. “Sometimes coaches will say that they have four guys back but only won two games last year. So, you have a lot of guys that know how to lose. We have a lot of guys back that have experienced winning and success. We put pretty high expectations on ourselves this year. I don’t know what anybody else is saying, but we don’t really worry about that. Nobody was saying anything about us last year, either.”
The Big Macs, who had their first 20-win season in program history, missed the PIAA playoffs after falling to second-seeded Woodland Hills in the quarterfinals.
Samosky will fill into a starter’s role, along with Luke Palma at guard. The two are filling the voids left by the graduation of Observer-Reporter Boys Basketball Player of the Year Jason Fowlkes, a freshman at Slippery Rock University, and Kenyon Lewis.
“We told ourselves two years ago that we weren’t going to cry over who we aren’t. We are going to embrace who we are,” Bell said. “Both of those guys can’t be replace, and we aren’t trying to replace them.”
The two might be missed the most playing in the 2-2-1 and 2-3 defensive zone schemes used heavily by Bell because of the absence of a big, dominant post player.
“Jason and Kenyon could be out of position and make up for it with their athleticism,” Bell said. “If we do that now, if we are out of position, it’s going to hurt us. Staying healthy and playing good defense are the two keys.”
Cole Stanley and Tyler Crawford will provide valuable minutes off the bench for the Big Macs, who have similar teams on their non-section schedule as last year with the inclusion of Pine-Richland. They will play the Rams, the WPIAL Class 6A runner-up, in the PBC Hall of Fame Classic at Montour at the end of January.
“We may be better than last year but not have as good a record,” Bell said. “I think we have a good team, but when you have a good team, you have to get them ready.”